October 25, 2008

I’ll admit to a great fascination about the 1980s. It was the time when I was a young adult, excited by all the possibilities, absorbing every bit of pop culture and serious culture I could find. So I decided to write about it.

October 25, 2008

We’re very excited and had to share. Our friend Rabbi Barry Tuchman has been keeping his brilliant talent hidden, but we are passing it on because his work is just so stunning.

He has been photographing plants and flowers, sometimes manipulating the images in wild contortions of abstract color and drama. They are magnificent in extra large scale – 4 x 6, 8 x 12 – enough to fill building lobbies with a stop-them-in-their-tracks power.

Now we’re going to share a few photos. Imagine them in enormous sizes.

This information is directly from Barry:

Unlike a painting, photography is considered by some, a more accurate visual representation of a subject. Some feel that a photograph is a more truthful commentary of life and is less manipulated by the artist. With the goal of using the medium of photography as his color pallet and computer graphics as his brush, Barry Tuchman has created his own genre of Abstract Nature Photography.

Photography has been a passion of Barry’s since the early sixties, however, it is only recently that inspiration compelled him to present his first series of anomalous abstract photos created for large format reproduction.

Although his work is presented on canvas, many of his pieces are intended for the Extreme Large Format market.

Barry resides in Los Angeles and above his love for his camera and computer, Barry is an Interfaith Rabbi serving couples of differing faiths. Traveling the world performing weddings, Barry has captured many of these exotic locales as the source of his photographic images.

October 20, 2008

October 20, 2008

I’m very sad to hear of the death of Mr Blackwell. Over the past couple of years, I got to know this wonderful, charming man. He was a spirited dinner companion, full of stories of old Hollywood, never hesitant to share his opinions.

Mr Blackwell was underappreciated as a designer, and he laid the ground for many design innovations. I have a collection of Mr Blackwell clothing from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Blackwell died Sunday of complications from an intestinal infection, publicist Harlan Boll said.

Blackwell, whose first name was Richard, was a little-known dress designer when he issued his first tongue-in-cheek criticism of Hollywood fashion disasters for 1960 — long before Joan Rivers and others turned such ridicule into a daily affair.

Year after year, he would take Hollywood’s reigning stars and other celebrities to task for failing to dress in what he thought was the way they should.

Being dowdy was bad enough, but the more outrageous clothing a woman wore, the more biting his criticism. He once said a reigning Miss America looked “like an armadillo with cornpads.”

A few other examples:

Madonna: “The Bare-Bottomed Bore of Babylon.”

Barbra Streisand: “She looks like a masculine Bride of Frankenstein.”

Christina Aguilera: “A dazzling singer who puts good taste through the wardrobe wringer.”

The critic acknowledged he had mixed feelings about appearing so publicly mean. Most of the women he put through the wringer, he said, were people he genuinely admired for their talent if not their fashion sense.

“The list is and was a satirical look at the fashion flops of the year,” he said in 1998. “I merely said out loud what others were whispering. … It’s not my intention to hurt the feelings of these people. It’s to put down the clothing they’re wearing.”

He told the Los Angeles Times in 1968 that designers were forgetting that their job “is to dress and enhance women. … Maybe I should have named the 10 worst designers instead of blaming the women who wear their clothes.”

Surprisingly, the woman who topped his worst dressed list for 1982 (announced in early 1983) was the newly married Diana, Princess of Wales. He said she had gone from “a very young, independent, fresh look” to a “tacky, dowdy” style. She quickly regained her footing and wound up as a regular on Blackwell’s favorites list, the “fabulous fashion independents.”

Blackwell had started out as an actor himself, having been spotted by a talent agent while still in his teens. He landed a job as an understudy in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley’s heralded drama “Dead End.”

Although he got to the play the role of the Dead End Kids’ leader on stage only one time, it led him to Hollywood where he landed bit parts in such films as “Little Tough Guy” (uncredited) and “Juvenile Hall” (as Dick Selzer).

He abandoned his acting career in 1958 after failing to make it in movies and switched to fashion design. He claimed to be the first to make designer jeans for women, and his salon had begun to attract a few Hollywood names when he issued his first list covering the fashion faux pas of 1960. (Italian star Anna Magnani and Gabor were among his early victims.)

It quickly brought him the celebrity he had long coveted, and he quickly became a favorite on the TV talk show circuit. He also became for a time, in his words, “The worst bitch in the world.”

He hosted his own show, “Mr. Blackwell Presents,” in 1968 and appeared as himself in such TV shows as “Matlock” and “Matt Houston.”

In 1992, he sued Johnny Carson for claiming that he had added Mother Teresa to his list, saying the comment exposed him to hatred and ridicule. NBC’s response was that the “Tonight Show” host was obviously joking.

“Did you see what he said about Mother Teresa? ‘Miss Nerdy Nun is a fashion no-no,'” Carson had said. “Come on now, that’s just too much.”

During his heyday the issuing of Blackwell’s annual list was an eagerly anticipated media event.

On the second Tuesday in January he would assemble reporters at his mansion for a lavish breakfast before making a dramatic entrance for the television cameras.

By the turning of the millennium, however, the list had lost its juice and Blackwell took to issuing it by e-mail.

Born Richard Sylvan Selzer in 1922, Blackwell recounted in his autobiography, “From Rags to Bitches,” a troubled, poverty-ridden childhood in which he was variously a truant, thief and prostitute.